I have written a Beginners Guide to a Home studio on a budget, and also written a follow-up guide on the next steps for those with a home studio.
I had a few people email in reply, some of whom were grateful for the advice. But it struck me that some of you might not be sure whether they should only go to professional studios to record, especially if they want professional results. So that’s what I want to cover here today, as I there’s actually several reasons I strongly believe that every serious singer should invest in a home studio setup.
Let me explain why
Firstly, I wholeheartedly agree that if one is seeking professional results – and you yourself are not a said professional – then one should seek a professional and pay them to do the work they do best. It’s entirely why I applaud anyone who is progress focused enough to seek professional help to improve their voice in sessions. It astonishes me how many try to DIY their way to solutions without really knowing what they are doing.
However, many of you who sing seriously and record yourself will know, that there is far more to having a home studio than trying to avoid having to pay someone else. There’s a myriad of reasons that even a basic home studio setup is worth having. Moreover, I think a home studio is a wonderful complement to those who eventually want to get into a professional studio.
For those of you who do not have one, or are not sure why you should even set one up for yourself, I wanted to cover five reasons I think that every serious singer should have some kind of basic setup at home.
1. You get to hear how you ACTUALLY sound
One of the biggest shocks that people get when they record themselves, is they hear how they actually sound… and nine times out of ten, it’s nowhere near as good as they thought it was.
They hear the imperfections that were almost impossible to pick up on in the moment whilst singing. They hear the little out of tune moments, the words gone awry, the strain creeping in, the wobble on the notes they’re not actually that competent on but thought they were. It can be quite a sobering experience.
This alone is a massive eye-opener for most people, and is worth the price of entry alone. Having an aural mirror held up to your singing is initially very painful, but a wonderful learning tool for improving your vocals.
2. Polish your vocal drafts before paying a professional
Some clients of mine who are artists or record their own music do indeed use their own home studio vocal takes in their finished music. But many use their home studio to slowly refine their vocals on their material, before then going to a studio and cutting the real deal.
This saves huge amounts of time and money, as it means people aren’t going into valuable studio time cold, and throwing out wobbly take after wobbly take, with no real idea of what they are listening for. Engineers also appreciate working with people who have a clear idea of what they are looking for and can deliver reasonable takes each time.
3. Record certain tracks at home so you can be more efficient in the studio
Even for the singers who record their preferred vocal takes in their home studio, it can be enormously helpful to have some existing tracks before hitting the studio. This might be vocals, but it may also be some rhythm guitar tracks, or some scratch tracks (like a placeholder that may well get replaced in the formal process), that help guide them through the formal process in the studio.
NOTE: Very often professional artists have scratch tracks that were just meant to help guide them through the song in the fledgling stages, that remain in the final mix because they worked well.
You are generally paying by the hour/half-day/day when you go into the studio, and the more high-end the studio, the more time costs a lot of money. Hence, having useable tracks before you even enter the studio – whether they make it into the finished product or not – is immeasurably helpful.
4. Learning how music production works enables better creativity in your own music
This is possibly my favourite out of the bunch (after maybe the 1st one). When you first stick a microphone in front of your mouth and hit record in your spare bedroom, you will likely cringe at how amateur it sounds. You’ll also realise how much echo there is in your room, and you have no way to easily remove that from the recording (though professionals have software that can do a lot of this).
You’ll realise that there is a LOT of hidden work in professional studio work… which is why most should seek professional help if it’s the professional sound they want.
However, when singers persevere to improve their recordings even one or two degrees above that first attempt, they learn about the process and how it works. At first you’ll think “I need better gear“, and you’ll buy better gear, and it will sound better. You’ll buy lots of extra plugins to help massage your recordings. And you’ll keep working on things.
Then as you get more proficient with the software and improving the sound of your room and mic technique, you’ll realise “oh, the gear helps, but it’s more about what you do with it“. And you’ll come full circle. You’ll now realise what’s important, what is not important, and how the recording engineer’s skill is what will make or break the recording.
Whether or not you choose to press on doing it all yourself, or go and pay a pro to help you, understanding the above process make a huge difference to recording music well, quickly, and efficiently.
5. This all helps you understanding what good sound is
All of this is not just improving your hearing, and musical facility, but also helps craft your sense of taste. It enables you to home in on what good sound is, what bad sound is, and the subtle improvements one needs to make to go from good to great.
This skill is eternally useful, and has helped me to tweak other people’s studio setups and mixes on the fly.
Conclusion: my two pence
Put bluntly, I LOVE my studio, and I wish everyone could have a setup like it. It’s not terribly expensive to set up yourself, as you’ll read in the beginners guide.
Whenever I sit someone down in the sweetspot to listen to music, they give a verbal “ooo!” when they hear their favourite music… because it’s like they are hearing it for the first time. Investing time in the speakers (though they are not high-end, per the beginners guide), their setup and acoustic treatment (per the follow-up), makes an ENORMOUS difference to hearing things clearly.
When I get people to sing through my vocal recording chain, they get to hear themselves clearly, but also with some processing so they can enjoy singing softly or aggressively. It’s immense fun to be able to sing like this.
Moreover, I’ve been able to create great sounding tracks for clients, gigs, churches, in just a few hours, that I would never have been able to do before. Some of it is the skill acquired, and some of it is the time spent tweaking the room to give an honest representation of the sound coming out of the speakers.
Sure, a professional recording engineer could do the engineering part in a fraction of the time. But they can’t create what I want to create on the fly, and I can’t afford to go pay a recording engineer every time I get an urge to hit record on something. In the same way, if you’re creatively minded, and would love to indulge your musically creative side in a similar way, it really isn’t a huge outlay to get a simple studio together.
And when you’ve got something you’re particularly proud of that you’d love to get out into the world beyond just a few friends, then I’d highly recommend looking up some of the wonderful pro studios in the area to help you with their own expertise.
Want to learn do this?
If you have any questions about this and would like to discuss this in sessions, you can book in via my booking form right here.